Having clear, measurable goals are essential for any organization, including churches. What you decide to measure in the church is of utmost importance because what you measure ultimately becomes your mission. In other words, what you track and celebrate becomes the priority for your staff and church members. At the very least, what you measure becomes the standard by which people in the church gauge ministry success and effectiveness. So if you prioritize and continuously communicate a lag measure (i.e., weekend attendance, mid-week attendance) for gauging success, then typically your staff defaults to doing whatever it takes to grow the attendance numbers. Everything else in the church will take a backseat to this lag measure because it is the one metric that is most often tracked and celebrated. But as was already discussed in the opening post of the LEAD MEASURES series, lag measures won’t help a church that is stuck get unstuck. Lag measures alone can’t move the church in a new direction. And let’s be honest, most churches can draw a crowd if they work hard enough. However, Jesus didn’t call us to merely draw crowds; he called us to make disciples of all nations.

Lead Measures Provide New Direction

You can’t control lag measures since they are the result of decisions made in the past. Lead measures, on the other hand, are tasks you can engage in today that that will affect change in the future. Therefore, lead measures can help move your church in a new direction by measuring areas that require innovative changes leading to action. Lead measures can help establish a new culture in your church.

People Cultivate What You Celebrate

Your staff will cultivate what you celebrate as a leader, and the church body will cultivate what the pastoral staff celebrates. As you determine what to measure and celebrate, be mindful of the powerful influence measures have in motivating people to action. Give your people lead measures to pursue. Mobilize your staff and church with purposeful goals that will lead to the results and culture you desire.

An Example in Lead Measures

My church has a strong desire to equip the saints for ministry (a lead measure already discussed in a previous post). One specific avenue for ministry that we are targeting is our Life Groups ministry. We want to see a Life Group in every subdivision in our county. This is a geographical lead measure that shows our people the need to think and move beyond the walls of our church. There are currently 185 subdivisions and neighborhoods in our county, and we now have a Life Group in 86 of them. After some simple math, you can see that we need to launch 99 new Life Groups in the remaining neighborhoods to reach our geographical goal.

The geographical goal paves the way for another lead measure—leadership development. If we want to launch more groups, then we need more Life Group leaders willing to open up their homes to reach their neighborhoods. We set a lead measure to encourage the existing Life Groups to identify and train apprentice leaders. These apprentice leaders will eventually launch out from the current group and start a new Life Group in their neighborhood.

Developing apprentices helps reinforce a disciple-making culture that expects leaders to reproduce themselves by raising up more leaders. Eric Geiger writes, “The fruit of an effective leader is not merely followers but other leaders. Leaders are responsible for future leadership.” This new lead measure changes the scorecard of our church. The Life Group that we praise and celebrate is now a multiplying group that keeps developing and deploying apprentice leaders to launch new Life Groups.

Lead Measures to Consider

Shepherding: Each pastoral staff person will grab lunch or coffee with 2 or 3 church members every week.

Assimilation: Our Life Groups team will respond to 100% of the requests for finding a Life Group within 48 hours.

Leadership Development: Each Life Group leader will identify and equip an apprentice leader.

Discipleship: Each Life Group leader will disciple 3–5 people from their Life Group every 12–18 months.

Implementing key lead measures can help reinforce the new culture you desire to develop in your church. Remember, what you measure ultimately becomes your mission. Are your measures mobilizing people to live out the Great Commission?

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About Gus Hernandez

Gus is the Spiritual Formation Pastor at Long Hollow Baptist Church, where he serves on the Executive Team providing direction and oversight for the church’s disciplemaking strategy. He also serves on the board of Replicate Ministries, equipping pastors and leaders to create a disciplemaking culture in their churches by providing training, coaching, and resources. Before joining Long Hollow, Gus was the College Pastor at Christ Fellowship Miami, where he was involved in planting and starting new college and young adult ministries across Miami. Before serving at CF Miami, he served as the College and Small Groups Pastor at Brainerd Baptist Church. Gus is passionate about equipping people to become disciples who make disciples.